Gunmen Kill 10 Laborers in Balochistan

Officials say men on motorbikes opened fire on construction workers in Gwadar’s Peshukan Ganz neighborhood

Gunmen on motorbikes opened fire on construction workers, killing 10 in Balochistan province, officials said on Saturday.

Mineral-rich Balochistan has been plagued for decades by a separatist insurgency and sectarian killings and gunmen have previously targeted laborers seen as outsiders in the region.

“Two gunmen riding on motorbikes opened fire on a group of construction workers in Peshukan Ganz neighborhood of Gwadar,” said local administration official Munir Zamari. “One worker sustained injuries and he is being treated at a local hospital,” he added.

The incident was confirmed by another administration official Naeem Bazai, who said that all the workers were from Sindh province.A spokesman for the separatist Baloch Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the incident in a telephone call to AFP.

Balochistan is the largest of Pakistan’s four provinces, but its roughly seven million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth. A greater push toward peace and development by Pakistani authorities has reduced the violence considerably in recent years.

The push includes starting work on a massive Chinese infrastructure project—the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor—which gives Beijing a route to the Arabian Sea through Balochistan’s deep sea port of Gwadar.